


Grit

by mmmdraco



Category: Firefly
Genre: Multi, Post-Serenity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-05 15:57:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1824073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/pseuds/mmmdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For so long, Simon's life had been about the things he could do. He was a consummate professional... usually. For so long, it had only been isolated instances of being anything but the perfect son, or student, or brother. And then be became a fugitive, dragging his sister along with uncertainty cloaking everything he knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merle_p](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/gifts).



For so long, Simon's life had been about the things he could do. He was a consummate professional... usually. For so long, it had only been isolated instances of being anything but the perfect son, or student, or brother. And then be became a fugitive, dragging his sister along with uncertainty cloaking everything he knew. 

Being aboard the Serenity was something unlike anything else. It was a ship almost smaller than his childhood bedroom and they were up in it almost constantly, but it didn't breed a familial environment. He remembered tension with River in her youth, back before he went away to MedAcad, and it was never anything like the flare of feelings that always sparked up between people within Serenity's walls. It didn't take too long to realize that things were different in the heart of space.

On any of the planets the Alliance had control over, there were a lot of things that happened. There were people and places and societal expectations of how they all interacted. If you were looking for coitus, there were companions to hire, or a series of complex mating rituals to perform in public to ensure that you were worthy of even a one night stand. Perhaps there was some sort of courtship to lead to a marriage that may actually include more than a bare minimum of touching. Once they'd started to travel to the outer planets a bit more, Simon learned that sometimes buying someone a drink and looking at them a little too long was enough to ensure you'd stay warm in your bunk that night. It was a bit hedonistic for him, really, but it was hard to keep that idea up on board Serenity amid all of the other changes he was forced to adapt to.

Wash and Zoe went at it often. It was their right, of course, because they were together. A unit. He wouldn't dare have expectations otherwise. The inner walls of the ship were somewhat thin, so he was subjected to the sound, and sometimes he retreated to his own bunk to touch himself in time with their coupling. Zoe was a beautiful woman and Wash an interesting man. He might have imagined how things might have gone if the three of them were ever to begin something, but it seemed like a harmless enough thought to entertain when his body reminded him of his loneliness. He didn't think of it anymore.

Inara had her own vessel and, as a Companion, it was known she used it as her own den of iniquity. Only, it wasn't really that. It was business. It was something of an art, he'd heard people say. It was probably part of why Inara wouldn't give Jayne the time of day even when he offered to pay her double for her services, loudly, during dinner. Simon had to keep himself from laughing even as he treated the wound to Jayne's hand that came from the captain's fork. Less amusing was Inara's offer of her companionship at a "reasonable discount". She was a beautiful woman, too, and he had the money to pay, but it seemed too awkward of a situation to truly consider.

He did find, over time, that flirting was something that happened on the ship. None of them excelled at it, it seemed, but it became obvious that Kaylee carried something of a torch for him. After the events on Miranda, he felt the power of the loneliness he'd been succumbing to and let himself just feel his way through one night with her. It was nice to have the comfort. Kaylee smiled more at him afterward, offered to engage him in company when he felt like it, but she didn't place any demands on him.

By that time, though, Wash was gone and Zoe was grieving. Simon knew all too well that Zoe knew exactly what loss felt like, but he also knew that she would never have expected her husband, the pilot, to die before she did when she was the one on the front lines. A few months after Miranda, after they'd dropped off a shipment of cargo that bore the marks of having been Alliance materials at one time, they all sat around in the dining area drinking. The alcohol burned hard and fast and Simon was glad to let it, glad to let go of some of the things that stuck in his head and wouldn't leave when he was possessed of his full sense of self, even if it was only temporary. Somehow, that night, he ended up in Zoe's bed. They kept their clothes on and just touched and spoke in soft tones, but it was enough closeness that stuck in his mind that he didn't argue when she came to his bed a week later for a roll in his sheets. Like with Kaylee, it was something easy without demands. 

When Jayne got shot in the groin with some tiny pellet of a projectile thanks to trying to make eyes at the wrong woman, it fell to Simon to remove it. Jayne refused to allow himself to be put under, claiming that he didn't want Simon near his privates without supervision. Simon may have been insulted, but he was perfectly capable of his job and did it, glaring at Jayne whenever possible. It was difficult by now not to know what Jayne's face looked like in the first throes of desire. Seeing it there now gave him pause, but he was learning how this went. A few casual brushes of his knuckles against Jayne's dick, tucked carefully under cover, while applying the bandages gave him all of the answers he needed to the questions he hadn't asked. He learned quickly in Jayne's room just how easy it was to make the man quiet. For all of his posturing, he was actually somewhat gentle.

River gave him small smiles and increasingly wordy diatribes about home and family. If she was involved in any of the kind of behavior he was, she wasn't obvious about it. He wasn't certain he would begrudge her it, either. 

The captain, Mal, was an odd man. Simon had felt a rush of desire shortly after meeting him, but circumstances had never seemed to favor anything but a tenuous understanding between them. He'd assumed so much about where the man's interests might lie. Had assumed he was pining for Inara, or secretly hoping to take up with Zoe once enough time had passed for things to be calm in her head again. But, the way they all moved together like everything was a symbiotic relationship made him wonder if maybe he could chance being the one to court danger. He stripped naked in Mal's bunk one night and gave the man a long hard look when he entered. 

Mal slipped the straps of his suspenders off of his shoulders and looked him over, smirking. "Took you long enough, Doc."

"I didn't..." Simon pushed the sheets down to his hips and turned toward the other man. "In most places, it's not considered _normal_ to sleep your way around your group of friends without the dynamic of your relationship changing significantly."

Pulling off his clothes until he was down to bare skin, Mal moved toward the bed and pulled the sheets down, sitting on the edge so his thigh was flush against Simon's hip. "When you're out here in space, there's no goin' anywhere. You got problems, you deal with 'em. There's some that deal with 'em by hiding everything away, but that ain't what works. You gotta aim to stay human and ain't nothing so important as contact for that. We get our talkin' out over dinner, but touch helps. There's many a man I knew in the war who'd fight twice as hard just because there was danger for the person they'd just had some kinda contact with. It don't have to be love, Doc, to be important."

Simon wondered if the words were supposed to inspire him to some new level of greatness. It didn't matter, really. This was the life he'd accepted and it fit, somehow, better than anything he'd considered before. When they'd first come aboard Serenity, it had felt like everything was rough and he couldn't quite seem to settle against it. Time had passed, though, had worn him down with the roughness until it was a subtle comfort. He wouldn't say he belonged, really, but he was definitely a part of it now. And as his hands trailed across the captain's skin and they use their mouths for more than yelling at each other, he was glad. He'd given up a life of complex pleasures for a life of simple ones, and it was the birth of fulfillment like he'd never known.


End file.
